Pickle & Fig

By Isaac Miranda • 31 Mar 2015 in Venues

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Panini-tastic
One of our qualms with most local cafés is that they claim to focus on the coffee and on creating the perfect environment for hipsters to browse Reddit on their unskinned Macbooks – but the food generally flat-out sucks, or is at most, just alright. We’d heard good things about Pickle and Fig being the polar opposite of those cafés, and keen to try something a little different, we braved the afternoon parking scarcity of TTDI to grab lunch at two-and-a-half year old spot.

The first thing that struck us was undoubtedly the relative spaciousness of the entire outfit – large tables and a minimalistic (yet thoughtful) design across Pickle and Fig’s untreated cement aesthetic go a long way towards comfort, and we’d rather take that any day compared to being cramped up in ‘intimate’ spaces with junk from the ‘80s filling up every visible nook and cranny. The second was the huge chalkboard menu that spanned the café lengthwise with a comprehensive ingredient list for each food and beverage item to boot. The third was the clientele that this café seemed to attract. It wasn’t filled with boisterous lepak-ers, but instead seemed to draw an older working-class crowd while we were there. So far, so good.

We tucked into several of Pickle and Fig’s signature sandwiches (it’s what they’re known for; a remnant of the owner Pang’s heydays back in the UK) and they’re nothing but delicious – if anything, they almost seemed a little too healthy for our Malaysian palates (we kid). We ravenously devoured the Rotkraut Pastrami, Coronation Chicken, and Balsamic Lamb paninis, all plated with a hearty serving of salad and triple cooked wedges (perhaps to balance out the super-healthy dishes on offer).

Of course, one trip was far from enough to sample everything, and we came a few days after our initial trip around dinnertime to scarf a few more dishes down. This time around, we ordered P&F’s famous smoothies, as well as sampled their February Bacon Jam special – caramelised bacon and almost criminal amounts of mozzarella, Onion and Cheddar soup, along with a ying-yang duo of Guacamole Chicken and Smoked Salami & Pesto sammiches.

We honestly were at our cynical bests to try and poke holes in P&F’s armour of bread and juices over the two trips, but we can’t seem to find anything to complain about. The food is nutritious and unbelievably delicious, the smoothies are the perfect blend, the service is pretty damn good– we may have just found our new favourite café.

Oh, and their coffee does the job too.